Gile, John Carlo Y.

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Biography of Antonio Pigafetta (ca. 1490-ca. 1534)

He is a famous Italian traveller born in Vicenza around 1490 and died in the
same city in 1534. He is also known by the name of Antonio Lombardo or Francisco
Antonio Pigafetta. Initially linked to the order of Rhodes, which was Knight, went to
Spain in 1519, accompanied by Monsignor Francisco Chiericato, and was made
available from Carlos V to promote the company initiated by the Catholic Monarchs in
the Atlantic. Soon he became a great friendship with Magallanes, who accompanied,
together with Juan Sebastián Elcano, in the famous expedition to the Moluccas begun
in August of 1519 and finished in September 1522. He was wounded at the battle of the
island of Cebu (Philippines) in which Magellan found death. The output of Seville made
it aboard of the Trinity; the return, along with a handful of survivors (17 of the 239 who
left this adventure), in victory, ship that entered in Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz) on
September 6, the designated year. In the last years of his life, he travelled by land from
France to finally return to Italy in 1523. He wrote the relation of that trip, which was the
first around the world, Italian and with the title of Relazioni in lathe to the primo viaggio
di circumnavigazione. Notizia del Mondo Nuovo with figure you dei paesi scoperti, which
was published posthumously, in 1536.

The account of Pigafetta is the single most important source about the voyage of
circumnavigation, despite its tendency to include fabulous details. He took notes daily,
as he mentioned when he realizes his surprise at Spain and see that he had lost a day
(due to its driving direction). It includes descriptions of numerous animals, including
sharks, the Storm petrel (Hydrobates pelagicus), the pink spoonbill (Ajaja ajaja) and the
Phyllium orthoptera, an insect similar to a sheet. Pigafetta captured a copy of the latter
near Borneo and kept it in a box, believing a moving blade who lived in the air. His
report is rich in ethnographic details. He practiced as an interpreter and came to
develop, at least in two Indonesian dialects.

The geographical impact of the circumnavigation was enormous, since the

Magallanes-Elcano expedition overturned many of the conventions of traditional
geography. It provided a demonstration of the sphericity of the Earth and revolutionized
the solid belief, so influential in the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, that the
Earth's surface was covered for the most part by the continents. Pigafetta also wrote a
treatise of navigation mainly Ptolemaic inspiration, but that contains the description of
three methods to determine the length, probably derived from the Francisco Faleiro.
These methods were: 1) by calculating the distance from a point of known length by
observation of the distance of the Moon from the ecliptic; 2) by observation of the
conjunction of the moon with a star or planet, and 3) through the use of the compass.
Pigafetta also describes how to take the altitude of the pole star to determine latitude,
know the wind direction and other minor navigation problems. Mistakenly believed that
Gile, John Carlo Y.
BSA 1-15

the direction of the compass coincided with the meridian of iron island. His description
of the trip also includes details of the own navigation, as the description of the Sun at
the Zenith, and forwards to readers interested in his own treatise on navigation
and Aristotle.